Evangelizing Explained

102
Evangelism explained Christian Heilmann, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 06/11/2008 (Yahoo Internal)

description

Another presentation on Evangelism and what it all means, this time delivered in Sao Paulo/Brazil

Transcript of Evangelizing Explained

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Evangelism explained

Christian Heilmann, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 06/11/2008 (Yahoo Internal)

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I’m Chris.

Hello I am Chris

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I live in London, England

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But originally I am German

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Doesn’t matter though, both countries keep losing against

you playing football...

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Anyways...

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Developer Evangelism

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Sounds like not working, right?

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Far from it.

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As a developer evangelist you are first and foremost a

translator.

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Evangelist

The Business

Tech Colleagues

The Outside world

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You are lucky if the business understands that as an

evangelist you need your freedom.

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You are also lucky if the business doesn’t have any

short-term agendas.

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Your colleagues are very much needed...

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...as they keep you rooted in the now and the reality of the

company.

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They can also be bad for the cause as they have to suffer a

lot more day-to-day frustrations than you do.

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Your job is to find the middle ground of these frustrated

voices and the business message.

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This is where the truth lies.

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First and foremost you need to be an independent voice.

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Keep your eyes open all the time and follow what is happening on the web.

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If a startup or a competitor of your company does

something cool...

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...you should know about it.

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Don’t barge into the developer “scene” trying to

sell only your company’s solutions.

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No matter how cool they seem at the time.

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Instead show them as an offering, a system that works

well with others...

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...making everybody’s life easier and our jobs less of a

hassle.

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This is very important right now as if you don’t work

efficiently...

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...you might become redundant.

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Which brings me to another, very important asset of successful evangelists.

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Don’t bring your own agenda...

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... instead know what problems the people you talk

to have.

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I’ve had quite a hard time in my career to get my bosses to

sponsor me a ticket to go to conferences...

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...or even leave the office and talk to other companies and

developers.

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Which meant that when I finally went to one...

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...I made sure I got my money’s worth.

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Whenever you talk to people about your products and

services...

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...make sure people can take something back to impress

their bosses with.

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Which means that you need to do your homework and find out what people want

from you.

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You show different products to a design agency that you

would to a Python crowd.

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Talking about geeks...

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Coming from a large international company may

be a benefit...

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...but only when you use it right.

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Deep down every geek sees every large corporation as evil and replaceable by a

small server script.

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I thought that.

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Now I know that these corporations are made up by

geeks like you and me.

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Photo of Pete LePage of Microsoft and Peter-Paul Koch of Quirksmode.org drinking at The

Ajax Experience in Boston

Not the Antichrist

Not a hairpiece

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And our job is to get the world to at least hear about

these geeks...

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...if not meet them in the flesh.

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Which is why we should not only be present at developer

events...

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...but also open ourselves to geeks and invite them to

come to us for some informal (yes, beers) events.

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As a developer you need to be visible to get your

concerns heard.

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You might be the best deliverer out there but if you

really want things to change...

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...you also need to tell people about what you do and how

you succeed in being efficient.

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If you share your knowledge, you are less of a risk.

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You should work for the company, for yourself and for

the next developer taking over from you.

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By sharing information internally you make sure that

developers can have a real life and get sick without

stalling projects.

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You also allow for developers to move around from project

to project, thus preventing boredom and elitism.

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Sharing information internally is an absolute

necessity to have a successful team.

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However, to get the full picture you also need to

validate your ideas with the outside world.

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The same applies to big companies.

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We could be arrogant enough to say we know what people

need.

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But in essence we know jack until we can get it confirmed

from outside our echo chamber.

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And that is what we are doing with our evangelising.

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Evangelising means that we prove and improve our

products and assumptions.

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EvangelistInternal

Developers

Business

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Evangelist

World

Internal Developers

Business

Evangelist

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So how can we get the message out there?

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Well, first of all by using the internet.

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Set up a local mailing list that people can subscribe to.

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Have a blog that explains techniques and solutions built

in the company.

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A good example is the Filament group blog.

http://filamentgroup.com/lab

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I found this via a bookmark on del.icio.us...

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...that made it to hotlinks...http://dev.upian.com/hotlinks/

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...which I have subscribed to in Google reader...

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...which meant a friend of mine found it through my

shared items...

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...who lives next door to them and didn’t know them!

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The web is a web of linked systems.

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Not a billboard.

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Instead of just building

something and hoping that people

come...

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...be present where people already hang out.

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Have a twitter bot telling people about things that

happen.

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Use social bookmarking, photo sharing sites and social

networks.

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Then you will reach much more people and point them

to your resources.

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They in turn will tell their friends and contacts.

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And word of mouth from people I trust is much more powerful than a corporate

message.

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Whatever you do, wherever you show up...

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Be very responsive.

Establish yourself as a

“way in”.

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So what do *we* have to offer you can talk about?

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It all starts at

http://developer.yahoo.com

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Designers can benefit from our design patterns:http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/

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The YUI is an amazing framework to build web sites

with (CSS, JavaScript, Widgets)

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/

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Our APIs give access to all our data:

http://developer.yahoo.com/everything.html

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In various handy formats and now even accessible with a

SQL-style syntax:http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/

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Using the Yahoo Application Platform, people can develop

applications running on Yahoo! sites:

http://developer.yahoo.com/yap/

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The performance team assembled an amazing array of cool tools and information

how to make web sites lightning fast:

http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/

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There is great information on server security and attack

vectors on the web:http://developer.yahoo.com/security/

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And for people who want to mash up data in a nice, visual

way, there’s Yahoo! Pipeshttp://pipes.yahoo.com/

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There are several systems to use to authenticate users for

your apps with our help:http://developer.yahoo.com/auth/

http://developer.yahoo.com/oauth/

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Lots of stuff to talk about and package up in an easy to

understand way.

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Why not have a go at it?

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Christian Heilmann | http://wait-till-i.com | twitter: codepo8

Obrigado!